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LittleBigPlanet Goes Behind the Wheel in Karting Game

For fans of LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2, the ever-adorable Sack Boy has returned. This time, he’s behind the wheel.

The result of two years of work, LittleBigPlanet Karting brings plenty of its hallmark charm, integrating familiar characters, inventive settings and treasure hunting into a racing game — now in 3D.

While LBP Karting’s controls and items have similarities to Mario Kart (a longtime favorite of mine that stems back to the N64 version), the races within Craftworld are loosely structured like an adventure game, as opposed to a grand prix, with plenty of prizes to collect throughout. That means, more funky costumes, accessories and now karts to outfit your character with. After all, LittleBigPlanet is known as much for its imaginative play as Sack Boy’s utter adorableness.

However, the biggest distinction from Nintendo‘s iconic racing game is that on LBP Karting, users can build their own levels, which in theory means an endless number of tracks to race. Talk about getting bang for your buck — speaking of which, the game is priced at $59.99. The impression I got from a demo from the folks at United Front Collaboration, which developed the game with SonySan Diego Studio, is that it’s easy enough to get started for beginners but the detail oriented will be satisfied as well.

The story-mode levels are intricately crafted, providing lots of surprises and fun, and the music is great at conveying the mood of the environment. While the sheer number of levels is a definite plus, it’s hard to identify them because of their ambiguous names (After the Wedding versus Mario Kart’s Baby Park, for instance), an issue prevalent in previous LBP titles as well.

Though the game centers around racing, there are a number of levels where there are no tracks at all. Some of these can be a bit kooky. For example, in Egg Kartin’, the aim is to best your competitors in holding a giant dinosaur egg for the most amount of time during a three-minute match. (Yeah, I don’t get it either. Like the previous LBP titles, I mostly ignored the storyline). Since you advance upon placing in the top three slots, you unfortunately can’t ignore these inane battle levels, which subsequently felt more obligatory than fun.

But that’s not the case of all non-racing levels. Target Practice, which is designed to teach you about the nature of weapons, has you race against the clock while aiming to hit your competitors 30 times. It’s one of those levels I unexpectedly found myself replaying over and over again until I was able to reach my hit goal and collect 100 percent of the items.

The major non-racing aspect of this game is prize collecting. Though I think it brings in a lot of LBP’s original delightfulness, my gotta-catch-em-all mindset found it distracting from the races themselves. Part of LBP’s charm is not so much completing levels in record speed but instead letting you take your time to explore and discover. Given the placement of many hidden items, prize collecting and winning are sometimes mutually exclusive. Still, it’s an effective way to keep you engaged and replay without getting bored of the levels.

That competitive mentality is also a driver in whether I want to play the game with the PlayStation Move Racing Wheel. It’s less clunky to use than the teeny wheel for the Wii. But when your goal is first place, it won’t be the tool of choice (same goes with Mario Kart on the Wii). Even though the wheel accessory offer a more tactile experience, fine tuning your maneuvering, such as drifting, is more difficult, which essentially means a handicap against players on regular controllers.

Still, what surprises me most about LBP Karting is its ability’s to enter a new genre and still make it its own. The exercise of familiar gestures, such as propelling yourself through the air with a grappling hook, is an example of how this is uniquely fun in a LBP way. The game has a refreshingly upbeat and sunny personality, making this great for playing in groups, but still has enough magic to keep a single player captivated.

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